Ray said, “Your guy is crazy.”
“He’s a good man,” Ingrid said.
“You think he’s crazy though. You’re crazy too,” he said to Tony.
Tony heard the night through the screened windows, the frogs at a distance, a pond somewhere, and after a while the water in the river, close to the porch. He heard the silence spreading out to the traffic on roads far away. He remembered the anarchy of the wilderness and felt the weight of his responsibility. This now, it’s all because of me.
Bobby Andes was gone a long time. Tony asked Ingrid, “Where is that telephone?”
“Down by the gas station,” she said. She wondered what was keeping him. She got more beers from the refrigerator and gave one to Tony, who declined it, and another to Ray on the floor. She fried some eggs and bacon.
“Yay momma,” Ray said. “You fixin us something to eat?”
They were afraid to unlock him, which made eating hard for him. He could use only one hand. He said Ingrid was a real nice lady, but he felt like a fuckin animal in the zoo.
She began tapping her foot. “Bobby, Bobby,” she said.
“Looks like he run off and left you,” Ray said. “You and me, the three of us, alone together.”
It was dim, the room gloomy, with only the one light, a sixty-watt bulb hanging from the cross beam. The brown cardboard walls, pictures from magazines posted with thumbtacks, wild animals, mountains, a calendar three years old. Fishing rods, a shovel, a two-man saw, stacked together in the corner. A musty smell, an old remnant of skunk. Even in the night Tony was conscious of the cavern shaped around the house by the trees, a feeling of damp woe, of rotted memory, of Bobby Andes’s misery.
Somewhat later Ingrid asked Tony about his wife and daughter. Ray was watching, listening to everything. “We went to Maine every summer,” Tony said.
“You had a good marriage?”
“We had a fine marriage. An ideal marriage.”
“No problems?”
“I can’t recall any.”
She said, “That’s very unusual.” Snicker from Ray.
She said Bobby had had a bad marriage. He played around, which his wife didn’t like and eventually she divorced him. His teenage daughter committed suicide, and his son left town and hadn’t been back in six years. This was where they had spent their summers in the old days.
“He told me he had only one child,” Tony said.
“That’s what he tells people.”
Herself, she didn’t believe in marriage. She was the receptionist in Dr. Malcolm’s office, and in her spare time she was writing a historical romance. She had been coming out to Bobby’s camp on weekends for about five years. She mentioned Bobby’s illness, how unlucky he was. She was considering sacrificing her principles to give him six months of happiness, for she was afraid he was heading for a breakdown. He seemed so mad and fierce lately. The chief complication was Dr. Malcolm. She glanced sharply at Ray. “It’s no secret,” she said. “They know about each other.” Ray snickered.
That makes her sound wanton. But everything about her was under control and regular. Actually, she said, she didn’t care about love. Her two relationships, it was a convenience and kindness for everybody. She kept them calm, she was not a passionate type.
She said to Tony, “I can’t tell what type of person you are. Anyone who had a perfect marriage, that baffles me.” She looked at Ray. “As for you. God knows what you are.”
“I’m just a ordinary simple fella, maam,” he said.
“I’ll bet you are.”
She said to Tony, “Do you know what he plans to do tonight?”
Tony didn’t.
“Police work,” she said. “Out here? God knows when any of us will get to bed.”
“Damn right, lady, jeez I need my sleep,” Ray said.
She ignored him. To Tony: “Maybe you could help Bobby.”
“Me?”
“You’re a professor, he admires your kind of people. If you could talk to him, calm him down.”
He felt sick, because he thought of Bobby Andes as helping him. The other way round had never occurred to him.
She saw his look and shrugged her shoulders.
Shackled Ray from the floor spoke up. “Hey lady, how about helping me?”
“I want nothing to do with you,” she said.
“It’s cruel. You said so yourself. I got a crick in my back, I can’t move, I feel like a fuckin animal in the zoo.”
“You’ll have to wait until Bobby comes back.”
“Christ, he ain’t coming back.”
“What do you want? There’s no way I’m going to let you go.”
“Jeez I ain’t asking you to let me go. Just unlock my fuckin legs and let me sit in the chair. You got the gun. What more do you want? I ain’t going no place.”
Tony didn’t want to look at Ingrid, for he knew she was looking at him. He knew she thought they should undo Ray’s leg irons. Probably he thought so himself, for he felt ashamed looking at Ray on the floor. It made him uneasy, though.
“What do you think?” she said.
“Let’s wait for Bobby,” he said.
After a while a car approached, the light shining through the window. Reading in her chair, Ingrid muttered, “Thank God.”
Car door outside, footsteps light on the gravel, then the screen door opened and a young woman in a red miniskirt walked in. She looked confused. Ray looked up. “Well,” he said.
“My God, it’s Susan,” Ingrid said.
The girl named Susan looked at Ray on the floor. “What’s going on?” she said.
“Where’s Bobby?” Ingrid asked.
“How should I know. Isn’t he here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Leslie kicked me out again.”
Ingrid laughed. “Well if you’re willing to sleep in the woods or something.”
The woman named Susan was looking at Ray’s leg irons.
“Are you playing a game?”
“A little police work here. Meet Tony Hastings and Ray Marcus. Ray Marcus is a prisoner.”
“A real prisoner?”
“Hi Susan,” Ray said. “Pleased to meet you Susan.”
“Tony is a visitor from out of town. Ray is charged with murder.”
“Not anymore,” Ray said. “They dropped the charges.”
Susan had a lot of makeup marking off the parts of her face. Her eyes were surrounded by dark color. She looked at Ray and shrank a little.
“Listen Susan,” Ray said. “Tell your friends they can get me off the floor now.”
“What’s he talking about?”
“He doesn’t like the leg irons.”
Susan gasped. She had just noticed the gun in Tony’s lap.
“Are you a policeman?” she said.
“Tony’s the victim of the crime Ray is charged with.”
“I thought you said the crime was murder.”
“Christ, they think I’m going to jump them. They got the gun and the cuffs, and they still think I’m going to jump them.”
“Oh shit,” Ingrid said. “Let him up, for Christ sakes.”
Tony Hastings was glad for her decisive words. He knew their precautions were excessive, and they made him feel cowardly. The only thing was to be careful. They did it deliberately, with Ingrid holding the gun at Ray’s temple while Tony unhooked the hand from the bed frame, then locked the wrists together, and then released the irons. He stepped back and took the gun from Ingrid, and Ray struggled to his feet and sat in the chair.